Paradoxographical discourse on sources and fontains

Résumé En

I will focus on paradoxographic descriptions in order to define these as a literary construct in which the persona of the author – the way he asserts himself as a provider of information – is at least as important as the extraordinary nature of what he describes. I will furthermore deny that “marvelous” (thaumaston) or “strange” (paradoxon) can be understood directly as a theme, topic or fact. In my view, the paradoxographic quality of the text will be the result of how the description is accomplished, not of what is described. Using the special case of sources and fountains, we will see how their peculiarities, as well as their implication in some rituals, create a topos that is both referential (it is precisely locatedin some part of the world) and rhetorical (it obeys certain features that cannot be explained by referentiality). The author of a paradoxographic text will be prominent in this analysis: he is the one who creates the conditions under which we are supposed to react, as we say, “this is indeed paradoxon.”